What Matters and What Doesn't
by LoveandLearn
Summary: Derek learns his lesson the hard way and then he comes to understand exactly what matters in his life. Starts out super angsty then becomes very cute. I warn you, this is hardcore Addek. One-shot!


It was a day much like any other. Everything was exactly the way it usually was. It was cloudy and raining like it always was. Patients were coming in and out of the OR, people were rushing through the ER. Nurses were bouncing from patient to patient to check on them and make sure they're doing all right. Doctors were running back and forth between procedure rooms and exam rooms to provide care for their patients.

Addison had barely left the NICU since her shift started. It was safe to say that it wasn't her best day. It was almost as if every infant in the room had decided to take turns crashing or maybe they were competing to see which half of the room could give her more heart attacks in a shorter period of time. By noon she'd lost two premature babies and she was ready to give up and go home to collapse on the bed and sleep for the rest of the week. She had no such luck because her pager went off, informing her that she was needed in the ER.

Derek's day had been less stressful but equally chaotic. In the five hours that he had been on shift, Derek had been in and out of the OR three times to operate on three different major trauma cases. All his patients ended up pulling through and Derek grinned to himself because he knew that no one else would be able to pull those patients through. He only thing that made him happier than happy patients was the fact that Meredith was the one assisting him on those cases. Having her by his side always cheered him up no matter how happy or sad he seemed to be. Addison used to be the only person that had that effect on him but things had long since changed. Now the only emotion that Addison inflicted on him was annoyance.

He and Meredith were sitting in the physicians' lounge each with a cup of coffee when Derek's cell phone went off with a page from the ER. He checked the screen before giving Meredith an annoyed glanced.

"Who is that from?" Meredith asked him curiously. She was exhausted, she didn't feeling like racing him to a patient because of complications and she sure as hell didn't have enough energy for another surgery.

"Addison's paging me from the ER." Derek mumbled, obviously annoyed. "You can stay here, I'll go see what she wants. I'll page you if I need you for the case."

Derek went to the ER and immediately noticed the absolute chaos. It was almost always an uproar in the ER but this was something beyond that. There was terror and panic written out on the face of every person he saw but he couldn't see the source of that panic until he heard the gun go off. The shooter was a woman he did not recognized and she dropped the gun as soon as the shot was fired and she took off running.

Derek's eyes shifted from the running woman to the woman lying on the ground, expect this woman he could recognize from miles away because he'd seen her for a majority of the last 11 years, 15 if you include the years they spent together before marriage. Derek screamed her name before he ran to her side and got down on his knees to be as close to her as possible.

"Derek." She rasped painfully when she felt him grab her hand and hold on to it tightly. "It hurts."

Derek searched frantically to see where the bullet hit her, his eyes scanned her arms and legs wishing for the best but he could swear his own heart stopped when he noticed blood seeping out from somewhere all too obvious, her chest. She had been shot in the chest and she was losing blood fast then he'd ever seen anyone lose blood. "Hold on, Addie, okay? A gurney should be here any minute so we can get you up to surgery and get that bullet out. I'll carry you up there myself if I have to."

"Derek, don't even bother." She whispered, making use of what little energy she had left.

"It's a gun-shot wound. We see and treat gun-shot wounds all the time, most of the patients survive. You can make it through this, Addie." He told her softly. He knew he was being unrealistic. He was a doctor and knew the bullet was too close to the heart. It most likely hit a major artery which would explain why she was bleeding out so quickly. "Don't give up, Addison." He begged.

"I'm tired." She mumbled, her eyes beginning to flutter closed while she continued to lose blood.

"Addison, please…" he said, clutching her hand tightly. He leaned in and placed a soft kiss on her lips, causing the front of his scrubs soak in blood when his chest came in contact with hers. And all he hoped was that it wouldn't be the last kiss they would share. Suddenly all thoughts of Meredith had left his head and the only woman that existed in his world was Addison.

"Let go..." She told him, her voice become softer and softer. It had only been two minutes since the shot was fired but it felt like an eternity to her. If was slow and painful but she was holding on as long as she can because for once she had Derek's undivided attention. If only it wasn't because she was on the brink of death. "..of me. Don't grieve and feel guilty or anything. Just move on and be happy. That's all I ever wanted…for you to be happy."

"Addison, don't be ridicules. I am not letting go, this cannot be the end." He answered her quickly, holding on to her even more tightly. He didn't actually think they're vows would serve to be true, that they'd be together until death did them part. No one would ever believe that. If they parted so young it was just assumed that it would be a divorce, not death.

"Derek…" she breath out what he feared would be her last breath. But it wasn't. She did her best to drawn in another breath and continued. "I'm sorry…for what happen in New York. I'm sorry."

Derek shook his head, refusing to let her spend her last few minutes of life feeling guilty. "You have nothing to be sorry for. I should be the one begging for your forgiveness."

"For what? You know that I could never hold anything against you no matter how much I'd want to." She replied, doing her best to muster up a smile to reassure him.

Seeing the barely visible smile made Derek's heart pump even fast then before with knowledge that he would never see it again and he returned the sweet smile until he realized she was become noticeably paler with every passing second.

"At least you're here with me. I get to be with you until the very last of my life. I don't think I could hang on for so long if I were doing this alone." She whispered, her statement followed by a harsh cough which notified him that his time with her was running out much like the air in her lungs. "Don't make me hold on any longer, Derek. I'm seriously tired and it hurts too much to bear the pain any longer. Let me go."

Derek nodded, not bother to hold back the tears that were escaping from his eyes. "I love you, I need you to know that. And I always will okay…No matter what."

"You can be with her now. I won't be around to come between you anymore."

"Addison, don't think like that…I love you and right now I don't want to think about being with anyone else. You're the only woman I want to be holding now and forever."

But she didn't say anything back. She let out the last breath as he had been expecting her to and her eyes closed before her body gave out in his arms and all he could do was hold on to her tighter. Everyone around them respected the moment and gave them space but after a few minutes one of the ER attendings approached Derek and placed a hand on his shoulder. "I have a gurney here to take her down to the morgue, Dr. Shepherd."

Derek pushed the man away and held on to his wife's lifeless body even tighter. Ironically he and Addison saw a movie while they were dating and the wife in the movie was holding onto her dead husband for hours and sobbing hysterically. Derek turned to his girlfriend at the time and told her that was the weirdest, creepiest thing anyone could do. It wasn't until he was in that position that he understood why the fictional character in the random movie couldn't let go. He didn't even hold her like that when could still feel it.

Another hour went by and the ER was emptied, giving a traumatized and grieving Derek privacy to say his final goodbye. One more hour went by and still Derek refused to leaves so Richard had no choice but to approach him and give him a sympathetic, apologetic look. "Derek, you've got to let her go." He whispered. "Let's go get you a cup of coffee and I'll take you home. You've got to tell her family…and yours. You can take as much time off as you need. But you've got to let her go right now."

"I can't let her go, I'm not ready to let her go…I don't want anyone to take her away from me."

"Derek, you've been here like this for almost three hours. She's gone, you can't bring her back. Let her go, give her peace." Richard told him softly, offering a hand to help him up. Derek hesitantly took it and stood up but the second he realized that some stranger would be the one lifting his wife onto the gurney he refused. He needed to be the one to do it, at least that would give him a chance to hold her for a few more seconds. He cradled her carefully in his arms and gently out her down on the gurney then stepped back as someone covered her body with a white sheet. He didn't even bother to hide the fact that he was crying.

"I guess it's true what they say." He murmured as the wheeled it toward the elevator to take it to the morgue. "You don't know what you've got until it's gone."

And that's when Derek's eyes burst open and he found himself heaving in absolute terror. He rubbed his eyes to discover himself in bed instead of the ER at Seattle Grace. There was no bright florescent lighting all around him. Instead he was surround by complete darkness and silence with the exception of the sound of someone evenly breathing right beside him. Derek rubbed his eyes in confusion and squinted to see through the darkness so he could identify the person at the edge of the other side of his bed.

"Addison." He breath out in relief. He abandoned his side of the bed and moved toward the middle to be closer to her but that didn't satisfy him. He pulled her warm body away from the edge of the bed and closer to him until he was tightly holding her with her back to his chest then placed a tender kiss at the nape of her neck.

"What are you doing?" Addison asked, despite the fact that she was still in a heavy sleep. Derek used to hold her while they slept through the first few years of their marriage. He would randomly kiss her in the middle of the night and some of the time he wasn't even awake when he did it. It was just reflex. But after a while behavior like that stopped. Since coming to Seattle there was barely any affection between them. Sure they slept in the same bed but that was just a formality, they could not be further apart. Derek would sleep on his side, never once did he accidently roll over onto her side. She would sleep at the very edge of her side, taking up as little space as possible to be as far away as she could be. She started doing that after her first night when rolled over to snuggle with her husband and he pushed her away in his sleep. Even in his sleep did he manage to make her feel unwanted.

"I'm holding you." He answered as if that wasn't self-explanatory.

"Yeah, Derek, I know you're holding me. But why? You haven't done this is at least 5 years."

"Because I don't want to miss out on the little things." He replied knowing that answer would make no sense to her but it made perfect sense to him.

"What?" she mumbled, forcing herself to open her eyes and become more alert so she could actually understand what her husband was talking about.

"I don't want to miss out of the little things that make us Derek and Addison. 20 years from now I don't want to be alone and a bed and think back to this time and regret passing the opportunity to hold you every once in a while." He paused and tightened his arm around her waist to prove to himself that she was actually there. "I want you to be the only person I ever wake up next to…Maybe I'll make an exception for the adorable kids we're eventually going to have. They had sleep between us once in a while."

"Derek, what the hell happened to you?" Addison asked, slightly confused as to how her husband's behavior toward her changed overnight. She was taught to believe that nothing changed overnight but Derek's drastic change of behavior literally did come overnight.

"It doesn't matter what happened, Addie. All that matters is that the nightmare is over and I that I learned what is actually important to me and what doesn't matter nearly as much as I thought it did." He answered, taking in the scent of her ridiculously overpriced shampoo and deeming that nothing would ever compare to that feeling.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." She whispered and closed her eyes again. "But if it means that you're gonna be like this from now on then I don't think I want to question it any further."

He didn't say anything else. Instead a comfortable silence took over and within a matter of a few short minutes he noticed her breathing become even and heavy telling him that she had drifted back into her coma like sleep. Knowing that she was safe and comfortable allowed him to drift off too, except this time he wouldn't wake up sweating because he would not let his nightmares become reality. Instead his new goal was making reality more magical than a dream.

* * *

I'm ending my Spring Break by posting this. Tomorrow life goes back to test and reseach papers and all that crap.  
Let me know what you thought of it :) 


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